2021 Year In Review

Rikers Island has always been synonymous with violence, abuse, and failure. Today, the City’s jails are experiencing a full-blown humanitarian crisis. At least sixteen New Yorkers have died in NYC Department of Correction custody this year. In addition to the spread of COVID-19, a wave of mass absenteeism of corrections staff has exacerbated long-standing problems, creating a hazardous environment for people in custody.

The Legal Aid Society has been a leading voice for decarceration in New York City, and this new crisis has amplified that call. We filed lawsuits on multiple fronts demanding basic access to medical care and transparency about conditions in the jail system’s rebranded solitary confinement units.  As counsel for the plaintiff class in Nunez v. City of New York, litigation challenging the systemic brutality by staff against incarcerated people, we petitioned for emergency intervention and secured important first steps to protect people in City jails. 

We also successfully lobbied Governor Hochul to sign the Less is More Act, making it possible to release nearly 200 people held on technical parole violations. Less Is More’s impact will be felt beyond the current crisis. It comprehensively reforms a draconian parole revocation system that has helped perpetuate mass incarceration for decades. 

As the City’s sole provider of representation in parole revocation hearings, this is a profound, positive change for our clients. While the crisis in City jails is ongoing, Less Is More will ensure fewer New Yorkers are sent there going forward.

During the past year of the continuing COVID-19 crisis, New York City’s children whose families are connected to the foster care or juvenile justice systems have suffered ongoing loss and trauma. Our teams focused on finding solutions in the face of these historically unprecedented challenges.

Legal Aid’s lawyers for children successfully advocated for the passage of the Preserving Family Bonds Act, which gives Family Court judges the discretion to order contact between children and their birth families after adoption. We helped pass new legislation to prohibit the inhumane use of mechanical restraints on children appearing in court. In a particularly trying year, these new laws center our clients’ most basic human needs and their families.

The approximately 6,000 city students who spend time in foster care during any given school year—students who are disproportionately Black and come from the city’s poorest communities—face enormous educational challenges. We worked with the NYC Department of Education to prioritize homeless children and children in foster care to receive remote learning devices during the pandemic. We also successfully lobbied them to create a team dedicated to addressing the specific needs of children in foster care, a historic change in the NYC Department of Education.

Over the last year, we saw widespread disruptions to how the City operated. To respond to growing gaps in city systems, we created a rapid response team to identify issues and trends, saving hundreds of children from unnecessary harm. This team acted quickly, moving children from group settings into the care of their relatives and therapeutic foster settings. We also took extraordinary steps to ensure children in care had valued time with family despite the obstacles of the pandemic.

Through immigration policy advocacy and law reform litigation led by The Legal Aid Society, we rolled back some of the most heinous Trump-era immigration policies. Principle on that list was the prior administration’s public charge rules, which denied immigration status through a wealth test designed to discriminate against lower-income immigrants. Legal Aid litigation brought against the Trump Administration ultimately helped spur the Biden Administration to enact policy changes that ended these damaging rules.

As intended, the rules had a chilling effect on the use of benefits in immigrant communities, creating fear that applying for public benefits—from food support to rental assistance—would lead to the denial of immigration relief and even deportation. An important component of our work moving forward is educating our clients on benefits to which they are entitled, free from the fear of repercussion.

We also achieved progress at the state level stopping federal immigration enforcement agents from staking out New York courts and arresting undocumented immigrants. Every person has the right to appear in court without fear of immigration enforcement action. Our successful advocacy for the Protect Our Courts Act makes this fundamental proposition a reality. Now, immigrant clients in New York State can appear in court free from the threat of arrest by ICE agents.

When the United States withdrew armed forces from Afghanistan, we rose to the occasion by filing over 40 emergency humanitarian parole requests for Afghan nationals who were at risk of retaliation or persecution by the Taliban. And as the global pandemic continued to create extraordinarily dangerous carceral settings, we fought for our clients detained by ICE, securing the release of 120 individuals.